The Mirror of Unknowable Things

No one knows how old the Mirror of Unknowable Things is. Rumor has it that it predates the library itself. The ruins carved into the back of the handle in a language recorded nowhere else in the library certainly lend credence to this theory. But there are many old things in the library, that alone does not make the Mirror of Unknowable Things special. No, what makes it special is its ability to know how to find things. The mirror first came to you early in your first year of university. Your mid-term research project for Post-Ancient Magic Words had hit a bit of a tailspin, and you were off on a tangent on the sack of Constantinople, when you reached for the next book in your towering stack and found the mirror instead.
The mirror is no bigger than a dinner plate, its antique gold frame intricately carved with the first Angel of Light holding the sun and the first Demon King holding a Crescent Moon together so that the sun and moon touch at the top center of the frame. The angel rides a Wyvern and the demon a hydra, and together the tails of the two creatures twist together at the bottom of the mirror to create the handle. It is a miraculous work of carving, one that you doubt could have been done by any less than a divine hand.
It’s reflective surface seemed to shimmer more like liquid than glass, so much so that you were afraid that picking it up the first time would result in the silver spilling all over your hands. When you finally draw up your courage to look inside (you have heard all the rumors about this piece of course) you don’t see your own face looking back at you. Instead, you see the Ancient Egypt section. It vision zooms to a particular shelf you would have never thought was relevant, and three particular titles on that shelf seem to glow with their importance.
Too curious to be thinking about it, you left the mirror on the table to collect your prize. It was gone when you returned, but the answers that lay within the books that it showed you changed the entire trajectory of your university studies. It will not be the last time the Mirror of Unknowable Things will give you this gift.
The Mirror of Unknowable Things is said to be the greatest catalogue of information in the library. Not only does it know where to find the information you are looking for, it often, for those it finds worthy, is able to point a person to an answer they didn’t even know they were looking for. It values knowledge and the pursuit of curiosity among all things. You must be worthy enough for the mirror to show itself to you – any lazy scholar looking for a quick way to get ahead need not apply here.
When not in use, the mirror always finds its way back to the lowest right drawer in the head librarian’s desk. It’s the drawer that sticks when it rains and the air around the university gets too humid. It’s the drawer with the tiny, filigreed gold lock, and the matching tiny gold key that likes to wander off whenever Headmaster Draxos is looking to use it to look up historical budget numbers. The drawer, like the mirror, has a mind of its own. Do you think yourself worthy enough to peek inside?

Item type

Magical